Fortunately, President Bush came out aggressively in favor of free trade and made “fast track” (which he referred to as trade promotion authority or TPA) an integral part of his campaign platform. At the annual Council of the Americas meeting in Washington in May 2001, the President spoke eloquently about the power of free markets and the critical importance of free trade. The President, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick, among other senior members of the Bush administration, all laid out cogent arguments for the United States to again assume leadership in the effort to facilitate both regional and global trade agreements.
The Council of the Americas played an integral role in the ultimately successful effort to secure TPA. Along with the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Farm Bureau, and other business groups, the Council lobbied hard for the legislation. Although the vote in the House was extremely close (215 ayes to 214 nays), the Senate passed TPA more easily. There is still a long way to go, but the Free Trade Area of the Americas and with it the promise of igniting economic growth within the stagnant economies of Latin America are once again within reach.
FORTIFYING THE AMERICAS SOCIETY
To secure the Americas Society’s future, we needed to find a solution to its persistent financial problems. Annual deficits and a small endowment inhibited its effectiveness. I wanted to solve these problems as quickly as possible, so in 1987 we retained a consulting firm to help design a capital campaign.
Their report was not encouraging. No money, they claimed, would be forthcoming from Latin America, and the most we could expect to raise in the United States would be $5 million. We needed at least double that, so we fired the consultants and developed our own plan. We set a goal of $10 million and decided to ask the Latin American members of the Chairman’s Council for a considerable portion of that. That in itself would be a real challenge. Wealthy Latin Americans had only just begun to support civil society institutions other than the Catholic Church, and convincing them to give substantial sums of money to a U.S.-based institution would be a difficult task, but I was determined to try.
Successful charitable fund-raising has much in common with managing a business: It requires leadership, persistence, and creativity. Accordingly, in the Americas Society campaign I got the ball rolling with a $1 million contribution to demonstrate my own commitment and set a level of giving for others. Then, because I knew it would be important early on to get at least one substantial commitment from a prominent Latin American, I approached Amalia de Fortabat, owner of the largest cement company in Argentina. I told her of my gift, explained my reasoning, and asked her to match it. Amalia quickly understood the logic of my approach and complied with my request. Our gifts stimulated other contributions; in fact, we raised $11.5 million, more than double what the “expert” consultants had predicted, with fully one-third of it from Latin Americans, who also became more involved in the affairs of the Society.
The rejuvenation of the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas in the 1980s was due in no small part to the strong leadership provided by George Landau. I had known George over the years as he moved from diplomatic post to diplomatic post in Latin America. He was an unusual foreign service officer—forceful, energetic, iconoclastic, and a firm believer in the importance of backing the U.S. private sector with all resources at his disposal. In my experience few career diplomats took such an active role in promoting American business internationally.
George served as president of both the Society and the Council for my final eight years as chairman. Our personal rapport and mutual respect resulted in an unusually effective partnership. They were banner years for both organizations.
The society’s home on Park Avenue has become an important forum for Latin American governmental and business leaders seeking to connect directly with the New York business and financial community. The society also makes it possible for Latin and U.S. politicians and business leaders to meet informally and privately to discuss specific problems, ranging from tariffs to intellectual property rights to direct investment, and to move them toward resolution. I am proud to say that the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society, bolstered by the Chairman’s Council, are among the most influential private sector voices in the United States promoting constructive relations with Latin America.
THE DAVID ROCKEFELLER CENTER
When Neil Rudenstine became president of Harvard University in 1991, I was delighted to learn at a get-acquainted lunch that Latin America was one of his highest priorities. We agreed that the vast majority of Americans knew little about their closest neighbors, and relatively few American universities provided their students with much more than a superficial introduction to Latin American history and culture. Even Harvard was derelict in this regard. Although some of Harvard’s faculties offered courses on Latin America, there was no overall coordination, few majors, and almost no visibility.
Neil wanted to upgrade Harvard’s teaching capacity in this critical area, and he sought my help. Since I had been looking for just that kind of opportunity, Neil and I had a happy meeting of minds. After our discussion he consulted with the deans of Harvard’s several schools and secured their support for the creation of a university-wide Center for Latin American Studies that would focus all of Harvard’s considerable faculty talent in one place. The center would be housed in its own building and have its own budget and director. Neil decided to name the new facility the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
The cost of the center was estimated at $30 million. To get the project off the ground, Neil asked me to give $1 million, matching a like amount from Harvard. I agreed to this and also to give another $10 million over time, with the understanding that Harvard would raise the remaining $20 million in outside gifts. We both agreed it would be highly desirable to ask Latin Americans to play an important role in the center as well as to contribute financially to its success. This goal was achieved in a remarkably short time.
The center got off to a flying start. John Coatsworth, a distinguished Latin American historian, became director of the center. Harvard Latin Americanists—from historians to public health specialists to zoologists, a core group of fifty scholars—now work closely through the center. As a result, the importance of Latin America within Harvard’s curriculum has grown, and the number of Latin American students enrolled there has more than doubled. Harvard has become a focal point in the United States for academic gatherings of all kinds relating to Latin America.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century I have become increasingly concerned about the political and economic stability of Latin America. The powerful surge of economic growth that followed the structural reforms of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and which dramatically raised living standards south of the Rio Grande, has now stalled. The two bright spots in the region are Mexico, now under the leadership of President Vicente Fox, and Chile. Both nations have stuck with the free market policies and democratic reforms instituted by their predecessors and have reaped their benefits, although not without a certain amount of pain and dislocation. But the promise of these two nations is, at least in my mind, counterbalanced by the poor economic performance of most other countries and the deepening social crisis that can be clearly observed in a number of others—Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela in particular. In some ways the situation is very similar to the late 1950s prior to the creation of the Alliance for Progress, or the early 1980s just before the full impact of the debt crisis was felt.
There are, however, two major differences between these earlier crises and the one we now confront. The first is the comprehensive and resilient framework of institutions that has been created to deal with international economic and financial problems. These institutions—from the IMF to the WTO to the U.S. Treasury to the incipient Free Trade Area of the Americas—have been severely tested by the peso crisis and the so-called Asian flu of 1998, and acquitted themselv
es well, although not without severe criticism from both the left and the right. The second factor is the growing awareness of Latin America within the United States. Economic development, environmental protection, human rights, and narco-terrorism are not just national issues but are hemispheric and can only be resolved through common action. Fortunately, the institutions with which I have been associated during my fifty-year involvement with Latin America—the Council of the Americas, the Americas Society, and the Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard—are now part of a much larger and more intricate fabric. The combination of these two factors will assure, I am confident, an immediate and effective response to whatever problems the future might bring.
*BGLA became the Council for Latin America in February 1965 when we formally merged with the Latin American Information Committee and the United States Inter-American Council. In 1970, we changed the name to the Council of the Americas.
CHAPTER 29
A PASSION FOR MODERN ART
I have been immersed in the world of art since I was a small boy. Among my first memories—aside from being left disconsolate on the dock in Seal Harbor while everyone else went off to see the stranded whale—are of Mother amid the Asian art in her incense-misted Buddha room or studying a Toulouse-Lautrec print in her gallery in our home on 54th Street. Father’s art—especially the wonderful Unicorn Tapestry—has also left an indelible imprint, but his formidable collection of fragile Chinese porcelains, old masters, and austere religious works, beautiful as they were, did not invite intimate contact. It was clear as well that Father believed we should admire their perfection and absorb their timeless beauty from a distance. Mother was different. Although she had an expert’s understanding, Mother also approached art emotionally, and she wanted her children to revel in the full beauty of a painting, print, or piece of porcelain. Above all she taught me and my siblings to be open to all art—to allow its colors, texture, composition, and content to speak to us; to understand what the artist was trying to do and how the work might provide a challenging or reassuring glimpse of the world around us. It was often a deeply enthralling experience. I owe much to Mother, but her patient transmission of her love of art is a treasure beyond calculation. Her death in April 1948 left a deep hole in my life.
I had not fully realized the extent of my devotion to her and the influence she had and would continue to have on my values, artistic tastes, and appreciation for the intrinsic quality of all people. Apart from her devotion to Father and her children, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was Mother’s consuming passion. From the early 1920s everyone in the family knew of Mother’s growing enthusiasm for almost all forms of contemporary art, although many of us, particularly Father, were mystified by it. MoMA was a logical extension of this passion, and the nurturing of the museum became her strongest priority.
My involvement with MoMA—indeed, my interest in modern art—took much longer to develop. In fact, it was not until I was asked to replace Mother on its board that I took any real interest in the museum.
It is true I had had a front-row seat during the museum’s creation in the late 1920s. Many of the planning sessions were held at our home on West 54th Street, and it was there I first met Lillie Bliss and Mary Quinn Sullivan, who shared my mother’s determination to create a museum where the work of younger, more innovative artists could be shown to a larger public. A few prominent businessmen and important collectors, intrigued by the ideas of the three ladies, also attended these meetings, which were often long and drawn out. I remember Father waiting impatiently for them to end.
Once Mother and her associates decided to create a new museum, a director had to be found. Professor Paul Sachs, head of the Fogg Museum at Harvard, recommended Alfred Barr, a young art historian who was then teaching at Wellesley, where he had initiated the first college course on modern art. Barr was a risky but inspired choice. Barely thirty at the time, he was a scholar and an aesthete with a broad acquaintance among European and American artists, among them Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, two of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. Over the course of the next forty years Alfred built MoMA’s collection of unparalleled modern masterworks and helped shape the taste and sensibilities of the art world and the general public.
NELSON TAKES COMMAND
Within a year of graduating from Dartmouth in 1930, Nelson had immersed himself in MoMA’s activities. Together with several bright, energetic friends he joined the Junior Advisory Committee, which had been established to attract younger people to the museum. Nelson and his contemporaries were brash enthusiasts who insisted that artists working in more abstract styles should have a prominent place in the museum’s exhibitions and programs. This brought them into conflict with older, less venturesome trustees who were comfortable with more conventional exhibitions. They stirred a debate that still rages today over the appropriate boundaries of “modern” art in terms of ever more radicalized art forms. In the 1930s this debate raged around the relationship between the classical work of Degas and Monet, on the one hand, and the more controversial offerings of Ernst, Mondrian, de Chirico, and Klee on the other. Today the tension centers on the connection between these older artists and the sometimes shockingly graphic, sometimes bewilderingly nonrepresentational practitioners of contemporary art. The traditional belief that art should be beautiful seems irrelevant to many younger artists today.
Even in the early 1930s everyone knew Nelson wanted to be president of MoMA (not to mention the United States), but he was reluctant to seek the office too aggressively as long as Mother was still active. It turned out that he had an unlikely ally in Father, who frankly disliked modern art and resented the leading role that Mother was playing at “her” museum. Mother served as treasurer and first vice president during the museum’s early years, but Father pressured her to decline the presidency when it was offered to her. Finally, in 1936, he used Mother’s worsening heart problems to persuade her to resign altogether from her official posts. Nelson had his opportunity. He replaced Mother as first vice president and treasurer, and in 1939, just as MoMA’s building was completed, was elected president.
Nelson was an enthusiastic collector of modern and contemporary art. He was quick to find merit in controversial art forms, which comprised the bulk of his purchases. His favorite pastime for most of his life was to pore over auction catalogues, carefully marking the objects on which he would bid. Nelson’s enthusiasm and willingness to take risks enabled him to help MoMA become the kind of cutting-edge institution that Mother had intended it to be.
Nelson’s partner in this endeavor, really his alter ego, was René d’Harnoncourt, who became MoMA’s director in 1949. René was a great bear of a man, standing more than six and a half feet tall. A chemist by training, he became an expert in pre-Columbian art after emigrating to Mexico in the 1920s. René was charming and well educated, and he bubbled over with ideas. Nelson and René assembled a stunning collection of primitive art from Africa, Oceania, and Central and South America, and exhibited it at the Museum of Primitive Art, which Nelson created in 1954; it was located just to the west of MoMA. It was this collection that Nelson donated to the Metropolitan Museum in memory of his son Michael.
Nelson and René’s partnership transformed MoMA, making it more accessible to the general public and taking it down new and ever more daring paths.
After Mother’s death in 1948, I was honored to be asked to fill her seat on the board. I was somewhat intimidated by the responsibility and my lack of preparation for it. After I left home for Harvard in 1932, I had few direct contacts with the museum other than attending an occasional exhibition. In addition, I was very conscious of joining a board on which my older brother was the dynamic president and realized it would be best to “learn the ropes” before I attempted to take a more active role in MoMA’s affairs.
The one area in which I did take an interest was the unfinished garden along 54th Street, site of my childhood home, which Father had demolished in the late 1
930s after he and Mother moved to their Park Avenue apartment. In 1949 I donated the funds for the design and construction of the Sculpture Garden. At my request Philip Johnson, whose architectural talents were already widely recognized, agreed to take on the commission, and it quickly became a favorite feature of MoMA. That was a happy way for me to begin my active participation in the museum’s affairs.
SURROUNDED BY MEN IN RED COATS
Part of learning the ropes at MoMA was enhancing my own knowledge and appreciation of art. Peggy and I were fortunate to find a wonderful mentor in Alfred Barr.
I had come to know Alfred through Mother. His passion for ornithology and mine for entomology gave us a common link through the world of natural history. After I joined MoMA’s board, he became a good friend of Peggy’s and mine, and served as a bridge between us and Mother’s museum. While there were many others over the years who helped us in the selection of paintings for our collection, Alfred had the greatest impact.
When we were first married, my income was strictly limited, and so was our ability to purchase art. We used what little money we had to purchase a few paintings, which served as wall decorations. Almost all the works we hung in our first homes were gifts from Mother, including several watercolor landscapes of France and Italy by Arthur B. Davies, whom Mother had discovered early in his career. Mother also gave us a large, handsome George Inness landscape, which we prized. But most of our walls were filled with prints: an entire folio of prints of the Hudson River; a number by John James Audubon, though none of his important ones; and some not particularly good examples of Currier & Ives, which we placed in less conspicuous places. After Mother’s death we received from her estate a number of prints by the Japanese master Ando Hiroshige and a set of black-and-white prints by Honoré Daumier.
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